Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday January 29, 2015 @01:31AM
from the thinking-better dept.

the_newsbeagle writes "Did my head just beep?" wonders a woman who just received a brain implant to treat her intractable epilepsy. We're entering a cyborg age of medicine, with implanted stimulators that send pulses of electricity into the brain or nervous system to prevent seizures or block pain. The first generation of devices sent out pulses in a constant and invariable rhythm, but device-makers are now inventing smart stimulators that monitor the body for signs of trouble and fire when necessary.

Modern pacemakers usually have multiple functions. The most basic form monitors the heart's native electrical rhythm. When the pacemaker does not detect a heartbeat within a normal beat-to-beat time period, it will stimulate the ventricle of the heart with a short low voltage pulse.

The earliest ones simply stimulated the heart at regular intervals, but this newer variety that monitors the heart for signs of trouble (e.g. irregular heartbeat) and fires when necessary has been around for decades.

Right, but as this technology progresses and individual neurons can be targeted for activation, it's going to raise some concerns. Such as security. You thought your cellphone had terrible security, imagine getting brain hacked.

- Hi, my computer is not working, and I have a sudden urge to wire all my saving into an offshore account.
- Did you click on that attachment we warned you about earlier today?... silence...
- I no click attachment...
- *sigh* I'll be right down, Steve call security until we r

In principle they can be. My father had one which had the capability to act as a defibrilator, more or less autonomously. Apart from that function, it could be programmed to kick in below a certain heart rate.

The sad thing is: at some examination, the doctors re-programmed it so it would only stimulate the heart at a rate of 40 bpm (or was it that it would only kick in below 40 bpm), but didn't tell my father about it. Though very fine before this secret intervention, since they had changed these settings,

Microbots that can link together to from insulated wires, or build insulated wires that are safe in vivo.

Microbots that can transmit power and information through several layers of nerve and other tissue

The thing is, we're getting there. These are no longer science fiction: the path to each of these abilities is very clear. And when these abilities converge we'll have matrix style give-me-knowledge-now and complete VR. Not to mention brain augmentation. This future is far, far closer than it seems.

The thing is, we're getting there. These are no longer science fiction: the path to each of these abilities is very clear. And when these abilities converge we'll have matrix style give-me-knowledge-now and complete VR. Not to mention brain augmentation. This future is far, far closer than it seems.

I'd love to think that you're right, but to paraphrase the old Sidney Harris cartoon [ohio-state.edu], I think you need to be more explicit in your last step. Even if we could stitch up the whole brain with safe and robust wires and sensors, knowledge encoding is still largely a blank map.

Of course, broad- and fine-scale read/write hardware interfaces to the brain will give us a big boost toward figuring out the harder stuff. But that's going to be a massive undertaking, and outside of hand-waving "superintelligent machines

In terms of brain implants, we are at the Peg-Leg level of sophistication. We can offer them a solution that will help with some problems, but it isn't a case where we can solve all the problems.

So something that detects that a seizure will happen then does a pulse to stop it. Will help stop the seizure, but not cure all the problems, as well it may bring in some side effects, because the brain so so complicated.

However for some reason we have been polarized to a point that we really can't judge tradeoffs any more. We want a 100% cure. We want our food to be 100% healthy and fill us up, and meet the taste we are craving, we want technology to Run Fast, Use little power, and be tiny. We want our contractors to be Cheap, Fast and Good.

The fact that we live in this imperfect world, seems to have a lot of people paralyzed to the idea of progress where progress will sometimes means there will be a tradeoff.

Two tangentially stories seem to have been mashed together via short excerpts that lack context and don't make sense together as a single paragraph. Is there some point to either of the linked articles, or should I assume they're just as bad?

The challenge is in the accuracy. Generally a very small part of the brain has to be stimulated. Miss it and you could end up with a problem worse than the one you were trying to solve. When we figure out a way to more precisely target the right regions - a method that will likely take the surgeon out of the most precise part of the procedure - then we'll really be making great progress.

I can't wait till some marketing douchebag discovers that medical implants can be "connected" to the so-called Internet of Things", ostensibly for "quality assurance" and patient safety purposes. Then bingo! we have targeted advertising delivered straight to the visual cortex.

Or has slashdot gone over the edge this morning? Crazy FUD shit goin' on heah! I'm not certain the premise that an implant designed to break up epilepsy is turning people into cyborgs, or even "entering the age of".

At least not until we start integrating our brain implants into the Internet of "Things". Gonna take a mu metal hat to block that shit.

I'm not convinced there's any real progress here, I actually thought most of these implants were closed-loop already.
However this still seems VERY crude ! What's going on here is that they're detecting patterns that are empirically determined to trigger an onset of an attack, and then just blast some indiscriminate region of the brain with electric pulses of which the parameters are also determined empirically..
Ok, it's a good progress for people that really need it, and for whom there are no alternative